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Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

US authorities are appealing against a judge's decision not to order Apple to unlock an iPhone in a drugs case.
The Justice Department is relying on the same law as the one in its fight with Apple over the encrypted phone belonging to the San Bernardino gunman.
It has gone to a higher court after a Brooklyn judge said he had no power to give the order.
Apple said the order would be the start of a "slippery slope that threatens everyone's safety and privacy".
In the original hearing, the US government asked Judge James Orenstein to order Apple to open up a locked phone belonging to Jun Feng, who has pleaded guilty to participation in a methamphetamine distribution conspiracy. The Justice Department wants to use the device to find any of his co-conspirators
After Judge Orenstein's decision last week, the government resubmitted its arguments to a higher judge overseeing the matter.
While the case has similarities with that being heard in California in relation to the San Bernardino shootings, the New York case involves an older version of Apple's operating system. Feng's phone uses iOS 7, which is not protected by the same encryption technology.
"Apple has the technological capability to bypass the passcode feature and access the contents of the phone that were unencrypted," the Justice Department said in its court filing, submitted on Monday. It has asked District Court Judge Margot Brodie to hear the case. The Justice Department's lawyers called the request routine, arguing that the case was neither about asking Apple to do anything new, nor to create a "master key" to access all iPhones.
'Slippery slope'
The government said Judge Orenstein's ruling was an "unprecedented limitation on" judicial authority and that his legal "analysis goes far afield of the circumstances of this case". It also stated that the government "does not have any adequate alternatives" to obtaining Apple's assistance because attempting to guess the passcode would trigger the phone's auto-erase security feature.
Federal prosecutors cited several examples in which Apple has extracted data from a locked device under the law. Apple argues that it has opposed requests to help extract information from more than a dozen iPhones since being invited to challenge the government's use of the 1789 All Writs Act by Judge Orenstein in October last year.
The technology firm said it agreed with Judge Orenstein's ruling that granting the request would "thoroughly undermine fundamental principles of the constitution". It said: "We share the judge's concern that misuse of the All Writs Act would start us down a slippery slope that threatens everyone's safety and privacy."
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Source: BBC WORLD NEWS

Millions of people across Indonesia and the Pacific are about to be treated to a total solar eclipse.
Beginning late on Tuesday (GMT), the Moon will pass directly in front of the Sun, fully eclipsing the solar disk.
This will block all direct sunlight, turning day into night.
The eclipse will be total in Indonesia and the Central Pacific, while parts of Australia and east Asia will experience a partial one.
People along a 150km-wide strip running through Sumatra, Borneo and Sulawesi - the path of eclipse totality - will experience a blackout from about 07:00 to 11:00 local time.
Astronomers reiterated advice not to look directly at the Sun with the naked eye, or through a telescope. Experts recommend using either a professional solar filter in front of a telescope or camera, or special eclipse-viewing glasses.
The partial eclipse will commence at 23:19 GMT and the total eclipse at 00:15 GMT, with the moment of maximum shadow at 01:59 GMT.
The celestial event will end at sunset, local time, north of Hawaii (04:34 GMT).



Because the eclipse path crosses the International Date Line, in the local time zones it will begin on Wednesday 9 March and end on Tuesday 8 March.
Skywatchers in southern China, south-east Asia, Australia, Hawaii and Alaska will experience a partial eclipse when the Moon's penumbra - the outer region of the shadow - catches them. This will look as if a just a chunk of the Sun has been blacked out.
For eclipse watchers outside these regions, a number of astronomy institutes are hosting live streams of the event.
Scientists at Nasa said they planned to use the event to study solar physics.
From Indonesia, they will use an instrument called a polarization camera to capture 59 exposures of the Sun in just over three minutes, collecting data on the innermost parts of the sun's volatile, superheated atmosphere.
This region can only be observed during total solar eclipses when the Sun's bright face is completely blocked by the Moon.


The lower part of the sun's atmosphere, the corona, is thought to hold the keys to several solar mysteries, including the birth of explosive clouds of solar material called coronal mass ejections and the mystery of why the corona is actually hotter than the surface.
"The Sun's atmosphere is where the interesting physics is," said Nelson Reginald, from Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.
The most recent total solar eclipse took place in the far northern hemisphere on 20 March 2015.


Scource: BBC WORLD NEWS

Uber has revealed it received five rape allegations between December 2012 and August 2015.
The firm said the figure accounted for 0.0000009% of more than 500 million Uber journeys made during that time.
The information was released after Buzzfeed obtained screenshots suggesting more than 5,000 messages concerning rape had been logged by Uber customer support.
But Uber said the numbers were "highly misleading".
'Overstated'
Screenshots published by Buzzfeed showed a support centre agent searching Uber's customer correspondence database for terms such as "sexually assaulted" and "rape".
There were more than 5,800 search results for "rape" and 6,100 for "sexual assault", with some emails showing descriptions such as "Driver sexually assaulted me".
In a blog post, Uber said the numbers were overstated because:
Passengers often misspelled "rate" as "rape", and some wrote messages such as "you raped my wallet"
Names and email addresses containing "rape", such as Draper, were included in the search results
Search results included complaints from people who had not actually travelled in an Uber
The results included questions about sexual assault from customers who had seen the topic raised in news reports
The ride-sharing company said an analysis of its search results showed five conversations that alleged rape had occurred during December 2012 to August 2015.
170 messages included a "legitimate claim of sexual assault".
"Resolve without escalating"
But Uber admitted: "When serious incidents occur, people often report them directly to law enforcement. Therefore, those incidents may not be reflected in the numbers."
Buzzfeed asked Uber to provide with the data for independent analysis, but Uber responded that this would be a "serious breach of our riders' and drivers' privacy".
Details of Uber's instructions for support centre staff were also among the leaked screenshots.
Instructions for dealing with drivers reported for drinking or taking drugs state: "if rider does not want to escalate with [law enforcement] or media, follow strike system, issue warning, and resolve without escalating".
Writing on Medium, Uber said: "We're the first to admit that we haven't always gotten things right. But we are working hard to ensure passengers everywhere can get a safe, reliable ride.
"Sadly, no means of transportation is 100 percent safe today. Accidents and incidents do happen.
"It's why we are working to build an exceptional customer support team that can handle problems when they occur, including working with law enforcement."

collected from :BBC WORLD NEWS